Girls and Guns and Cars – Photoshoot

The fact that I haven’t yet bought and expensive camera and started calling myself a photographer kind of bothers me:

People can say what they want about how photography is so “tough”, but I’ve borrowed some expensive cameras in the past and I think this saying holds true:

Buy an expensive camera and you’re a photographer. Buy a flute, and you own a flute.

I’m not saying taking pictures of bullets in flight, and fast birds from far away etc.. etc.. doesn’t take skill, because it definitely does. Don’t even try to tell me that I could be dropped in a room with a few hundred thousand dollar car, some girls and some guns, equipped with ~$XXXX worth of camera and lenses and NOT come out with some sweet looking pictures.

What a bunch of random tattoos on those girls. Not my thing.. but I suppose “edgy” models can get a lot of work nowadays.

Maybe it’s just because of how young I am, but i thoroughly enjoyed this. Some of them even practiced decent trigger discipline! *single tear*. Although I am going to have to agree about the tattoo thing. Not to say they still aren’t hot, but I see it all the time around where I live. Girl’s who are just drop dead beautiful but have the most random and absurd tattoos on them.

Speaking as someone who was a “working pro” for fifteen years with a long list of local and national corporate clients…

… a person with an expensive camera owns a camera.

Owning a great camera and having a good subject doesn’t make you a shooter anymore than owning an HK MP5 and wearing 5.12 gear (’cause 5.11 just won’t cut it!) makes you Tier One.

My favorite camera of all time wasn’t my FM2’s or the Hassies or the P2 (although if you go large format, there’s Sinar and then there’s everything else), it was my lowly little Olympus XA. Why? Because there was no reason not to have it, and that meant when a good shot popped up, I was ready for it. Give me an XA loaded with HP5+ and I’m MUCH happier than if I were back in the old studio with the Broncolors and the Chimeras and lightstands and whatnot.

Yes, you can be “dropped into a room” with your choice of subject and your choice of camera, and your pictures will most likely suck. Why? Because shooting isn’t about guns, it’s about what hits the target and where (and how often) bullets/shot/whatnot hit the target in order to achieve the desired results, and photography isn’t about the camera, it’s about knowing how to control the light and shadow on your subject in order to achieve the desired result. Give me a tricked out race gun, and Rob Leatham will beat my score shooting Production every single time. Give me a studio full of whatever I want, and Dan Winters will shoot rings around me with an SLR and one light.

As for for shooting hot chicks, after the first ten seconds, the allure wears off and then become just another product you have to make look nice.

That first ten seconds is fun, though. I will admit that (though not to my wife…) :)

Yes, but you can take SEVERAL shitty photos and only turn out the good or great ones. We’ll never see anything else other than what you want to show us. Start playing the flute or guitar, and if you mess up you can’t take that away or hide it.

With that said, I take hundreds of bad photos whenever I have a camera. I am grateful that I do take several hundreds of photos at time, since I can at least pull out one or two that I’m extremely proud of. Taking photos to me, is a lot different than “shooting” with weapons, because sometimes you only get a SINGLE shot, versus shooting all day.

I’ve blasted through more than my share of silver halide crystals, and yes, sometimes a good shot is all about quantity. But sometimes, it’s about know what you want, seeing it, and waiting for that One Shot.

The concept of the “decisive moment” in photography started with Henrí Cartier Bresson, and he’s a hero of mine, along with Robert Frank and Garry Winograd. I found that I could nail that “One shot” on a regular basis because I put in the time behind the lens and I knew what was coming. There were many, many times I had limited time and film to shoot and get that one shot. In fact, the best photo I ever took was of an old lady in a medical clinic in Ecuador: I snuck my head in the door, saw the shot, focused/exposed and popped off three frames, and the light was gone.

Made a nice bit o’ change off of that shot.

There’s a lot of comparisons to be made between shooting and shooting: Both get better by regular practice, both are hella expensive, and both rely on being “in the moment” and ready to react to what might pop up.

And that can be learned on a cheap camera (although the shutter lag on cheap digitals drives me BESERK) as easily as it can be learned on a Hassie. Easier, perhaps, now that I think of it.

You may take one-hundred frames of crap to get one decent frame. A skilled photographer will take five decent frames, two perfect frames, and a few crap frames before moving on to their next motivation. Like any trade, it takes skill to know how to properly use their equipment under the conditions you are operating in to get a product that justifies your pay grade.

If you need another analogy: Any slob can take a pre-loaded M240B or M2HB at a range and dump 100 rounds in the direction of a car. It takes a skilled operator to use the same firearm and to lay down the appropriate level of fire to suppress or kill a target at 500 yards while being shot at.

“Because shooting isn’t about guns, it’s about what hits the target and where (and how often)”
– That’s what she said. Anyway, as a not-pro-but-getting-there-photographer I agree – there are tons of people I know who are picking up XTi’s and such that have no idea where to even start with manual, but every now and then come out with a mind blowing shot.

There was a phrase we used in speedball (paintball) that I’m sure is used by .50 gunners and such as well – “volume equals accuracy”. It also applies with photography – when you shoot at something 18-25 times a second you’re going to hit it. The pros “hit it” with less shots, and where the n00b photographers/shooters/whatever may be on the edge of the target the pro is on the bulls eye 90% of the time.

Modern camera’s automatic modes have gotten pretty good at masking lack of skill with their auto face detection, and better light meters. Unfortunately these tools make people *think* they’re a photographer when in reality they’re just taking a better exposed turd.

Speaking as one who does a fair amount of work with models, no, it’s not. Models are a royal PITA, and the “hotter” they are, the bigger of a PITA they are. Sure, any jackass can machine gun his way into a couple of decent images by shear dumb luck; assuming he can figure out how to light it, get hair/MUA/styling taken care of, and keep an insecure primadonnas smiling and on task. When I’m trying to explain to little Miss Bigknockers which foot is her left for the 50th time today (no, I’m not joking) I have silently prayed for death.

And for the folks saying “you can just take tons of images until you get a good one” that’s crap. You’re on the clock. Time is money; rent on the location, pay for the crew, time to post process. You have to pass those costs along and if you’re the guy that takes 5 hours to make an image that other folks can make in 2, see how long you keep getting work.

This personally pisses me off a bit because I always have my friends bitching about how photography isn’t work.

The tats don’t bother me and given half a chance I’d hit that short haired girl like the fist of an angry God, but girls being “sexy” with guns when they clearly have no fucking idea how to hold them is a massive turn-off.